Producers Struggle to Fathom the Fall of Sting’s ‘The Last Ship’

Sting joined the cast of "The Last Ship" in December.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Why do some serious-minded Broadway shows flourish and others flop? Monday night’s announcement that the new musical “The Last Ship” will close on Jan. 24 after a meager four-month run, despite unusual efforts by Sting, its composer, to increase ticket sales, raises that question more than most other foundering musicals in recent years.

On Tuesday the show’s producers, who will lose their entire $15 million investment, had no easy answers. What’s clear is that Sting’s gambit last month — to join the cast in hopes of drawing bigger audiences — provided a short-term lift at the box office but failed to generate enough excitement for the show to last. Sting was set to stay only until Jan. 24; ticket sales for performances after that were poor, one of the show’s producers, Jeffrey Seller, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Mr. Seller said that he had no theories for why more female theatergoers (who make up about 70 percent of Broadway audiences) and Sting fans did not embrace “The Last Ship,” about the troubled lives of shipbuilders and young people in a struggling British town. But he did say he was wrong to focus the marketing strategy and television commercials on the shipbuilders, which, Mr. Seller said he realized in hindsight, “American audiences don’t really relate to.” He said he wished he had focused instead on the young love story at the center of the show.

But marketing rarely rescues Broadway shows that people don’t want to see, especially when ticket prices range from $50 to $225, as they did for “The Last Ship” (not including discounts). The show opened in October to mixed reviews, with praise for Sting’s score — his first for Broadway — and criticism for the book, which Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called “unfocused and diffuse” and hamstrung by a surfeit of characters and competing plots about the shipyard, the townspeople, family duty and a love triangle.

Many musicals rise and fall on the quality of the book, especially serious-minded ones like “The Last Ship” that aren’t upbeat crowd-pleasers. Several commercially successful musicals have challenged audiences with the form or content of their books, including “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder” (an operetta), “Matilda the Musical” (child neglect), “Once” (unrequited love) and “Next to Normal” (mental illness and attempted suicide). But these shows thrived partly because many people enjoyed their stories, wit and humor and cared deeply about their characters.

Asked if he thought the book for “The Last Ship” dampened audience enthusiasm for the show, consequently limiting positive word of mouth, Mr. Seller said: “I’m not capable of analyzing that right now. I’m too proud of the material and too close to it.”

Video

In Performance: Sting and Rachel Tucker

Ms. Tucker sings “August Winds” from the Broadway musical “The Last Ship,” accompanied by the show’s composer, Sting, on guitar. Sting performs in the show, at the Neil Simon Theater, through Jan. 24.

Both Mr. Seller and another producer on “The Last Ship,” Roy Furman, said they did not believe the fate of the musical signaled that shows with serious, mature subject matter were in trouble on Broadway. Mr. Furman noted that he was also a producer on a new Broadway play, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” about a teenage boy on the autism spectrum and the difficulties he faces at home and school. That show, which earned critical acclaim, has become a hit.

“I would have been equally surprised if ‘Curious Incident’ had failed and ‘The Last Ship’ had worked,” Mr. Furman said. “This business is unpredictable. I think Sting’s score is brilliant, and I love the show, but there’s no way to anticipate or judge the zeitgeist for shows.”

“The Last Ship” had a great deal going for it besides Sting’s music: A Tony Award-winning creative team, led by the director Joe Mantello (“Wicked”) and the writers John Logan (“Red”) and Brian Yorkey (“Next to Normal”); one of Broadway’s most successful producers, Mr. Seller (“Rent,” “In the Heights”); plenty of money (a $15 million budget) from producers like Sting’s manager and Grammy-winning record executives; a prime theater; and relatively weak competition from other musicals that also started performances in the fall (including a revival of “Side Show,” which closed last weekend).

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But there were signs of trouble in the show’s tryout production in Chicago, where elements of the book and some of the characters — including the central one, Gideon, who is involved in both the love triangle and the shipyard — drew criticism from some reviewers. Changes were made between Chicago and Broadway; on Tuesday, Mr. Seller was not second-guessing whether they were sufficient.

“I think we got the show right,” he said. “This is the show we wanted.”

Sting went to great lengths to publicize the show, and then took the surprise step in November of announcing that he would join the cast in a supporting role, the shipyard foreman. He took over the character from Jimmy Nail, a longtime friend of Sting’s who said he was happy to step aside. When Sting began performances, the show’s box office grosses nearly doubled, and tickets continued to sell well — though not phenomenally so, with empty seats at many performances.

Last week, when some Broadway musicals were setting box office records over the New Year holiday and several others were grossing more than $1 million, “The Last Ship” grossed $953,165 — 77 percent of the maximum possible amount, with 83 percent of seats full. Before Sting joined the show, its producers and investors were losing $75,000 a week — a toll that would probably have resumed (or grown) in February and March, usually among the slowest-selling months on Broadway.

By joining the cast, Mr. Seller said, Sting brought renewed attention and appreciation to the show, and helped increase prospects of licensing deals in London, elsewhere in Europe, and in the United States for future productions. Mr. Seller was taking the long view on Tuesday: He recalled that, in 1935, “Porgy and Bess” opened on Broadway for the first time in the same month and theater as “The Last Ship,” and struggled and closed on Jan. 25, 1936.

“ ‘Porgy and Bess’ was not a hit the first time out, but it’s 80 years later and we have ‘Porgy and Bess’ as an American classic,” Mr. Seller said. “I don’t know what the future portends, but I believe ‘The Last Ship’ will go on to have a long life elsewhere.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 7, 2015, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Producers Struggle to Fathom Show’s Fall. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe